Ancestry's Rootsweb platform security is breached

Ancestry's Rootsweb platform (http://home.rootsweb.ancestry.com/) has had its security breached, affecting some 300,000 members. Whilst no credit card information is used or stored for the platform, a very small number of users (about 55,000) have the same log in details for both their Rootsweb and Ancestry accounts. Ancestry is advising that it is contacting all affected users - if you are one of those affected you will have to reset your account before you can use it again.

As a consequence of the breach, Ancestry has temporarily taken Rootsweb offline to try to make sure that all hosted data is saved. The company states that "as RootsWeb is a free and open community that has been largely built by its users, we may not be able to salvage everything as we work to resolve this issue and enhance the RootsWeb infrastructure."

For more on the story visit Ancestry's description of events at https://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2017/12/23/rootsweb-security-update/.

Chris

Needing a Christmas present for a family history obsessed love one (or for yourself)?! For my genealogy guide books, visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html, whilst details of my research service are at www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk. Further content is also published daily on The GENES Blog Facebook page at www.facebook.com/BritishGENES.